Since it’s inception in 1996, the purpose of the HR Executive Forum peer group has been to “build community for leaders” and help members grow professionally and personally with the ultimate goal of advancing high-performance people strategies in their organizations and preparing themselves for what’s next. The HR Executive Forum is a place for our members to “up their game!” We often try to create that possibility by anchoring our meetings around “powerful questions,” and creating a culture of curiosity, openness and freedom of judgment, trust and confidentiality, and lively dialogue. When topics are more technical in nature, it is even more important that we reflect on how we can go about advancing better organizational strategies and be personally more effective as leaders by asking the right questions. Here are some of the powerful questions we generated and discussed around compensation in this session:

1. What is compensation? What are we trying to do with it? Do rewards really motivate your employees to do what you want them to do? How do you know? How can you best communicate the value-add and actually drive the behaviors you want?
2. How important is it to have a compensation philosophy?
3. What about work/life balance, attendance? Can employee do more work? How much more?
4. Are we as a culture and as organizations set up for long-term or short-term success?
5. Are we limited in terms of how many models we can have under one roof? Why? What’s the framework we need to build that makes sense and is right for our particular organization?
6. Is compensation for employees or for the organization?
7. How transparent are we, do we want to be? How important is it for our employees to understand our compensation framework and be able to connect the dots and alignment to business strategies
8. Is it our goal to make compensation a non-issue or neutral? Implications? Tradeoffs? Do employees really leave because of pay or is it something else? Is comp just blamed?
9. Who am I and who do I want to be in my organization as it relates to a vision and strategy for compensation? How am I limiting myself? What are some underlying assumptions I am making? What would it look like if I had the powers of a magician?
10. What is the biggest challenge in this area for me right now? What have Ialready tried? What is my own theory as to why I have not been able to overcome the challenges?
11. What are some nuggets and fresh ways to think about compensation that I can take away from today’s session? Did I see some new connections?
12. Am I settling for too little? What would be possible for me if I allowed myself to set a bigger “vision” for compensation in my company?
13. What is propelling me as a strategic leader and someone that can credibly communicate and get the C-suite behind a new and different vision for compensation? What do I need to believe about myself in order to succeed? What is the risk if I change…do not change? What do Iwant my legacy to be?
14. How willing am I to do whatever it takes to help my executive team get out of their box and discover different ways to think about compensation? What is the cost to me/my organization of doing nothing?
15. What am I taking away from today’s session? What could I work on that would make the most meaningful difference to me and mycompany in advancing more effective and a fresh take on compensation strategies/frameworks now? What are some first steps I can take? When will I start? What is the worst thing that could happen?

Favorite quotes:

• How often do your employees bring data to you showing that they are paid “more” than what salary data suggest? The opposite?
• Keep compensation simple and your employees will understand it! Let it support people in being all they can be!
• Why do you have managers review my job content questionnaire. They have no idea what I am doing!
• The framework can be used for good but not for evil!
• Can you afford the Rolls Royce approach? Scale for your particular circumstance.
• If you are going to do it, do it properly!
• Glassdoor.com is pushing transparency on us whether we want it or not!
• Get your finance people on the same page!
• My company has a lot of control freaks. How do I get them to let go of control and perfectionism?

Resources:

• Glassdoor.com
• Drive, book by Daniel Pink
• Capuchin Monkeys: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=capuchin+monkeys+reject+unequal+pay&view=detail&mid=9F7374EEA78A672C41CC9F7374EEA78A672C41CC&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR&qpvt=capuchin+monkeys+reject+unequal+pay